Justice Barroso’s Fiction

Brazil has not had a Supreme Court of Justice for over five years. It continues acting as a supreme guard, but it has ceased to serve as a court – and, obviously, no one in their right mind would go there to seek justice. Instead of the Supreme Court, which existed until Bolsonaro’s election as the President of the Republic, what is in place now is a “Commissariat for Regime Security and Defense.” Its key role is to ensure, with the support of the Armed Forces, that the laws in effect in Brazil will never be applied in favor of those who disagree with the government, the justices themselves, and their interests. The court also works to ensure that any law will be violated whenever it represents a nuisance to the Lula-Supreme Court regime. The great innovation in all this, when it comes to political science, is the creation of the “anti-right vaccine.” Since the right, which today is referred to altogether as “far-right” only, began to threaten democracy when it started to win elections, the “democratic rule of law” can only be saved by abolishing the right-wingers’ rights.

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“Democracy has room for everyone, except for those who are ‘against democracy’,” decreed the president of the Highest Court in his latest encyclical, proclaimed at the University of Oxford this time. It is “the Soviet soul” that today inspires our “supreme court,” as it is commonly said. “Those who are against democracy” are the ones who disagree with the decisions of the Lula-Supreme Court governing junta – they cannot, therefore be protected by the law, because in the official doctrine now in force, they will “use” their constitutional rights to do politics, win elections, and end democracy when they come to power. In recent years, there have been various cases – including in Brazil, in 2018 – where the right won the election and took office. However, there has been no case where it installed a dictatorship after being elected. Now, here is the catch: since this is a right-wing reasoning, it is essentially anti-democratic. Arguments, in a “model democracy” like the one the Supreme Court made up for Brazil, can only be deemed legitimate if sanctioned by justice Barroso and his peers in the Commissariat.

O presidente do STF, ministro Luís Roberto Barroso, disse que o Brasil viveu uma prova de fogo para manter a democracia diante a ascensão da extrema-direita. A fala de Barroso aconteceu durante um evento na Universidade de Oxford, no Reino Unido. Veja.

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The mode through which the Supreme Court has been operating has no parallels in any democracy on the planet – and this is not about the explicit signs of underdevelopment, among which the payroll with almost 3,000 employees (even child development assistants have been given jobs in this crowded staff), nor the cost of R$1 billion per year. Today, the court is Brazil’s general slave quarters, a hopeless scenario. What stands out in today’s Supreme Court is its organization as a national police headquarters with a series of branches. There is the “Center for Combating Individual Rights and Public Freedoms,” headed by justice Alexandre de Moraes – who’s also in charge of the “Center for Combating Disinformation and Defending Democracy” in the electoral branch of the Highest Court, the Supreme Electoral Court. There is the “Center for Combating Punishments for Corruption Crimes,” under justice Dias Toffoli’s watch. There is the “Center for Combating Laws Approved by Congress” and the “Center for Combating the Opposition,” run in a rotation system. Finally, justice Barroso directs the “Center for Combating the Truth of Facts.”

In his latest operation, launched at the University of Oxford, Barroso endeavored to globalize the fiction that the Supreme Court has created in Brazil, in the 21st century, a model of democracy unrivaled in the world. On this mission, the justice, who is also the lifelong president of the “Center for Combating Bolsonarism,” counts on the insurmountable ignorance of the First World (not to mention the other worlds) regarding Brazil. If someone out there knew five percent of what really happens here, the president of the Supreme Court would not be able to speak from a soapbox at Hyde Park Corner. The facts show that on January 1, 2019, Brazil was living perfectly in accordance with its Constitution – or can anyone cite a concrete case of law violation by the State at that time? Five and a half years later, under the Highest Court watch, for the first time since the end of the military dictatorship, Brazil has political prisoners. It has exiles who are fleeing the country to escape justice Alexandre de Moraes’s prisons. It has perpetual police inquiries.

Barroso’s democracy

The democracy that justice Barroso presents in England entails official censorship on social networks, in the press, and in documentary production companies. Brazilians can be arrested, interrogated by the police, have their bank accounts frozen, their passports confiscated, and their privacy violated. All evidence against corruption, even including confessions and the return of stolen money, is annulled by the Supreme Court – making Brazil the only country in the world with impunity secured by jurisprudence. Judges who denounce situations or sentences they consider wrong are expelled from the judiciary. In a case of blatant violation of criminal law and civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution, a citizen has been imprisoned for more than four months without justice Moraes and the Federal Police having managed to find any evidence of the accusations against him – and despite having proven that he did not do what he has been accused of doing.

The president of the Supreme Court, and all his colleagues from the lecture circuit in rich countries, do not mention to any of the audiences that the most popular politician in Brazil today cannot run for elections until 2030 – for having spoken ill of electronic voting machines in a conference to foreign ambassadors. No one knows, however, that justice Toffoli paid with public money for a personal bodyguard when he attended the Champions League final match in London. The world also has no idea of such an extravagant anomaly that has been nicknamed “Gilmarpalooza” – a festival of prominent judges, government ministers, and businessmen with cases in the High Judiciary traveling to Portugal to discuss Brazilian issues. (The host is justice Gilmar Mendes, who accumulates roles as a Supreme Court justice and the ownership of a private law school in Brasília.) When it comes to conflict of interest, by the way, justice Barroso’s democracy sees nothing wrong with justices’ wives working in law firms with cases under consideration in the Supreme Court.

All this, according to the official premise, is what saved Brazil from “right-wing populism” – the mal du siècle, which, in president Barroso’s understanding, is the worst threat humanity faces today. According to him, in the last hundred years the world managed to overcome Nazism, fascism, communism, religious fundamentalism, and other evils; in Brazil, due to Supreme Court decisions, the world defeated Bolsonarism. It would now need to exterminate this far-right that wins free elections and intends, once in office, to execute “agendas” that the majority of the electorate does want to be executed – something that they openly demanded through their vote. Here lies the essence of such fictional worldview: the main danger to democracy is democracy itself. It can lead the people to choose governments not endorsed by the Supreme Court, and this, for the justices, is non-negotiable. To make things clearer, just answer these questions: in a reasonably democratic regime would a justice like Toffoli be acceptable? Would justice Moraes’ endless inquiries be acceptable? Would the “Gilmarpalooza” be acceptable? No, they would not – and the Supreme Court is the first to know that.

The lectures, dispatches, and closed-circuit rallies made by the justices, when looked at more closely, are a political verdict. This conclusion can be drawn from their speech, in which they do not pronounce the word “freedom,” for example – except to insist that it has limits, is being abused, and needs to be reduced to wartime ration. They do not speak of the “rule of law.” They do not use the expression “human rights,” nor “right to defense.” They do not call it “disturbance,” but “armed coup,” a riot where the most powerful weapons, according to their own police, were two or three slingshots. Worst all, they do not say or write the word “justice.”